A Short History of Nearly Everything

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. He takes subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry, and particle physics, and aims to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. In the company of some extraordinary scientists, Bill Bryson reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

At Home: A Short History of Private Life

Bill Bryson was struck one day by the thought that we devote more time to studying the battles and wars of history than to considering what history really consists of: centuries of people quietly going about their daily business. This inspired him to start a journey around his own house, an old rectory in Norfolk, considering how the ordinary things in life came to be.

Down Under

Australia has more things that can kill you than anywhere else. Nevertheless, Bill Bryson journeyed to the country and promptly fell in love with it. The people are cheerful, their cities are clean, the beer is cold, and the sun nearly always shines.

Notes From a Small Island

After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson, the acclaimed author of such best sellers as The Mother Tongue and Made in America, decided it was time to move back to the United States for a while. This was partly to let his wife and kids experience life in Bryson's homeland, and partly because he had read that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another. It was thus clear to him that his people needed him.

A Walk in the Woods

The Appalachian Trail covers 14 states and over 2,000 miles, snaking through some of the most spectacular landscapes in America. Reluctant adventurer Bryson recounts his gruelling hike along the longest continuous footpath in the world.

One Summer: America 1927

One Summer: America, 1927, is the new book by Britain’s favourite writer of narrative nonfiction, Bill Bryson. Narrated by the man himself, One Summer takes you to the summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and changed the world forever. In the summer of 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day, a semi-crazed sculptor with a plan to carve four giant heads into a mountain called Rushmore, a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and a youthful aviator named Charles Lindbergh who started the summer wholly unknown, and finished it as the most famous man on Earth.

Shakespeare: The World as a Stage

Shakespeare's life, despite the scrutiny of generations of biographers and scholars, is still a thicket of myths and traditions, some preposterous, some conflicting, arranged around the few scant facts known about the Bard: from his birth in Stratford to the bequest of his second best bed to his wife when he died.

The Grand Design

In this groundbreaking new work, Professor Hawking and renowned science writer Leonard Mlodinow have drawn on 40 years of Hawking's own research and a recent series of extraordinary astronomical observations and theoretical breakthroughs to reveal an original and controversial theory.

Sapiens

The Sunday Times best seller. Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it. Us. We are the most advanced and most destructive animals ever to have lived. What makes us brilliant? What makes us deadly? What makes us Sapiens? In this bold and provocative book, Yuval Noah Harari explores who we are, how we got here and where we’re going.

A Delicate Truth

A counter-terror operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted in Britain's most precious colony, Gibraltar. Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms-buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, and a private defence contractor who is also his close friend. So delicate is the operation that even the Minister's Private Secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it.

The Examined Life

We are all storytellers - through stories, we make sense of our lives. But it is not enough to tell tales. There must be someone to listen. In his work as a psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz has spent the last 25 years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behaviour. The Examined Life distils over 50,000 hours of conversation into pure psychological insight, without the jargon. This extraordinary book is about one ordinary process: talking, listening, and understanding.

World War Z

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched firsthand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living - or at least the undead - hell of that dreadful time.

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

From the creator of the wildly popular xkcd, What If? gives hilarious and informative answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask. Millions visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. Fans ask him a lot of strange questions. How fast can you hit a speed bump, driving, and live? When (if ever) did the sun go down on the British Empire? When will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than living?

The Life & Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

Bill Bryson's hilarious memoir of growing up in middle America in the Fifties, complete, unabridged and read by the author. Born in 1951 in the middle of the United States, Des Moines, Iowa, Bill Bryson is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24 carat memoir gold.

Journeys in English

This highly entertaining BBC Radio 4 series is written and presented by Bill Bryson and based on his best-selling book, Mother Tongue. In it, he romps through the history of Britain to reveal how English became such an infuriatingly complex - but ultimately world-beating - language.

The Sense of an Ending

Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour, and wit. Maybe Adrian was more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony is retired. He’s had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He’s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer’s letter is about to prove.

The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands to rethink their beliefs about life.

Neither Here nor There

In Neither Here nor There Bill Bryson brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia.

The God Delusion

As the author of many classic works on science and philosophy, Richard Dawkins has always asserted the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm it has inflicted on society. He now focuses his fierce intellect exclusively on this subject, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes.

Publisher's Summary

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. He takes subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry, and particle physics, and aims to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. In the company of some extraordinary scientists, Bill Bryson reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

What the Critics Say

"To read Bryson is to travel with a memoirist gifted with wry observation and keen insight that shed new light on things we mistake for commonplace. To accompany the author as he travels with the likes of Charles Darwin on the Beagle, Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton is a trip worth taking." (Publishers Weekly) "Stylish [and] stunningly accurate prose....Brims with strange and amazing facts...destined to become a modern classic of science writing." (The New York Times)

A superbly whimsical miscellany of knowledge. The narrator matches the style of Bill Bryson impeccably. The range of subjects covered is wide, and the treatment of each is first class. If every child starting high school listened to this before choosing subjects, there would be a far greater enrolment in the sciences. Whether you're a kid of 9 or 90, you will find this fascinating. I cannot resist a minor quibble - the wealth of Johannesburg was not based on diamonds, but gold. The South African city founded on diamonds is Kimberly, whence the term Kimberlite, the volcanic rock that frequently yields diamonds. That aside, what a great book.

Every human being should listen to this book. Not only will it make you appreciate just how far we have come as a species, and how lucky we are to be here (so many other species failed to survive). It will also make you realise that there is so far we have yet to go and just how wrong we can be, and occasionally, right.

Very interestingly written and captures / sustains your attention much of the time. On occasion the digrassions can be a little distracting but, these are rare occurances. It provides historical context to the development of the subject matter and is very enlightening on the many personalities whose individual efforts contributed to the whole.

This is my favourite audio book from audible so far. At first the narrator was slightly irritating, he sounds like the kind of "crazy professor" types they get to host pop science shows for kids, but after a while he grew on me, and in the end I think it was very well narrated.

The actual content is far too wide ranging to cover specifically in a short review. But it follows a coherent path about all those little tidbits of the history of our planet, our species and our universe, that everyone should know, but most of us never bothered to investigate.

Even though this is probably one of the longest audio books on this site, you'll still be wanting more when it's over. If you're interested in the general topics I mentioned, and just want a nice, "for the average person with an interest in science" presentation of this material, you'll thoroughly enjoy this audio book.

It rarely strays into the extremely technical or detailed, but still conveys the main thrust of the ideas. I highly rate this book, the writing is good, and there were times I laughed out loud, at the authors humour which kind of sneaks up on you.

I will first admit that I really like Bill Bryson and own all of his books - even "Palace Under the Alps". With that in mind, it won't be a surpise when I tell you "A Short History" is something pretty magical - it's helped to open my eyes to much in the world around me.

So why am I torn? Normally I detest Abridged books - I like books I can get deeply involved in and enjoy over a period of time. However, as with his other books, Bryson himself reads only the Abridged version of "A Short History" - and if you haven't heard him read his own material - well you really should. His droll, dry wit is best delivered by his own tounge.

So, my solution was to acquire both versions of "A Short History" and I've enjoyed both - but I leave the Bryson read Abridged version in my car and listen to it from time to time - I don't see myself doing the same with the Unabridged version.

What a great introduction to science. Bryson's great skill is to make a complicated subject enjoyable and easy to understand. Some of the most memorable moments in the book come from the stories of the various scientests detailed. A great read (listen!)

A great listen and read well by William Roberts. Every chapter was packed full of amazing facts that made me just want to listen on. There were very few dull moments and the highlights more than easily out-weighed these. So much of the book has interested me and made me want to learn more on the many subjects covered in the book. You don't necessarily need any prior knowledge on the subjects and is spoken on a intermidiate level. The unabridged version is great, only I wish it went on for longer! I am anticipating another listen later this year - it's that good.

Bill Bryson is best known for writing fun travelogues of his journeys around the world and, here, he turns the same sense of humour and writing style to this brief walk through the history of science.

Split in fairly broad swathes by subject, he addresses what we know, what we suspect and what we thought we knew but now figure we got wrong. This is interspaced with tales of the people behind the discoveries (many oddballs and eccentrics).

This is by no means complete, but there is a surprisingly large amount covered including cosmology, geology, biology and lots of other things you hated at school because they weren't presented this clearly or interestingly.

The only downside to the audiobook comes when discussing some numbers where the sheer immensity gets lost a bit without seeing it written down but it's the most minor of quibbles for a truly special text introducing reasonable intelligent science to the reasonably intelligent person.

112 of 115 people found this review helpful

Dominique

OerbaekDenmark

10/6/05

Overall

"A great contribution"

I listened to it in the car twice, my sons read it. I bought four copies of the book to give away to friends. ALL found it incredibly insightful and well written. So informative about important scientific developments. The author reads it perfectly. Very nice to listen to.

55 of 57 people found this review helpful

Gary

Congleton, Cheshire, United Kingdom

1/18/07

Overall

"Knowledge enough to blow your mind"

You certainly gets your monies worth with this book, as you'll need to listen to it over and over to get to grips with all the information contained. Having said that, it's easy listening and the narrator is easy on your ears.

25 of 26 people found this review helpful

Demeter

Norwich, United Kingdom

6/5/10

Overall

"An outstanding read"

This book is a genuine tour de force which I have listened to now many times, and will listen to again, and again.

8 of 8 people found this review helpful

Jane

Sheffield, United Kingdom

7/11/07

Overall

"Terrific"

I was gripped by this from beginning to end. Bryson provides an overview of modern science, tracing the story of various disciplines. What stands out is the way that he makes each narrative strand fascinating in its own right, while weaving them into a bigger picture. I loved the way that he provides a historical perspective on scientific endeavour. He's really good at explaining where various ideas came from and why they seemed radical in their day. I'm sure that if you're a serious scientist then Bryson is just glossing the surface. But as an interested non-scientist I found that this explained and illuminated a lot of ideas I had previously found vague and confusing. Fascinating.

10 of 10 people found this review helpful

Helen

FLEET, HAMPSHIRE, United Kingdom

11/16/07

Overall

"Long listen, needs concentration!"

I decided to give this a go on audiobook, as the length of the actual book put me off. I'm glad I did. If you are expecting 'History' in the traditional sense here, be warned - Bryson's book covers 'History' in terms of the creation of the world, the universe and everything, and is in fact far more concerned with physics and chemistry.

Very interesting in parts, although I have to be honest and say big chunks went over my head - it's the sort of listen that you can tune in and out of as you wish. Be warned though - it's very very very long, so you will need determination to get through it all.

18 of 19 people found this review helpful

Dave

BirminghamUnited Kingdom

3/17/11

Overall

"Brilliant!"

The author makes even the driest of subject matter engaging and entertaining. I now feel more knowledgeable about nearly everything!

13 of 16 people found this review helpful

Sara

Llanwrtyd wells, United Kingdom

1/10/11

Overall

"Brilliant book"

This is probably my favourite non-fiction title I have listened to so far. It pretty well delivers on it's titles promise, in that it covers so many subjects, from the origins of the Universe through to recent man's history. There are so many entertaining anecdotes and interesting facts, coming in such high concentration that as soon as it finished, I listened to the whole thing again so I could retain some more of them to amaze other people with!

If schools could capture just a fraction of the interest that this book creates in their classes, rather than rolling out tedious dates and formulas, then I am sure they would find grades would go up. History, Science, Geography, Biology, Astrophysics are but a few of the subjects that are brought to life with real facts delivered in a humourous and informative manner. Excellently narrated and highly recommended.

9 of 10 people found this review helpful

Tom

StockportUnited Kingdom

5/12/10

Overall

"A history of why the world is like it is"

This is a book with an astonishingly wide scope which it covers admirably. Never during its 19 hours was I bored and it remains accessible throughout. It's packed full of things you never even knew that you didn't know!

The fact that it's described as a history may suggest that it's all about things that happened in the past and indeed much of the book does cover events from Big Bang through to recent history. But in covering such history it also explains much about how the world is today.

This is a fascinating book that will interest a wide range of people. You don't need to be an expert historian or scientist to understand and enjoy this book. I'd definitely highly recommend it.

A word about the narration also - I've listened to a number of Bill Bryson books narrated by William Roberts and he is always an excellent narrator. The way he narrates the book just adds to what is already an excellent book and ensures that one's interest is not lost for a second.

I listened to two or three minutes and switched it off, never to listen again.

How could the performance have been better?

I have a large number of Bill Bryson audiobooks and return to them again and again; Home, America, A walk in the Woods, The Thunderbolt Kid, but all read, exactly as they should be, by Bill Bryson himself.

You didn’t love this book--but did it have any redeeming qualities?

For me, William Robert's readings have nothing to redeem them. I so want to listen to this book, but read by Mr. B.

7 of 9 people found this review helpful

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